Donna Huddleston is known for making intricately detailed, enigmatic scenes that evoke a stage set or film tableau. Working primarily with colored pencils, graphite and metal point––and, most recently, with acrylic paint––Huddleston carefully renders striking female figures within tightly constructed interior spaces and patterned, otherworldly backgrounds. Her work combines elements of classical portraiture, theater and popular culture, forming a stylized narrative world filled with a recurring cast of characters and motifs, articulated through a visual language that is uniquely her own.
Raised in Australia, Huddleston studied art and theater design at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. After her studies, Huddleston entered the film industry, working with a costume designer before returning to art making. In the early 2000s she relocated to London, where she exhibited her first drawings in 2005. Viewed up close, the stippled, crosshatched and dotted marks reveal her painstaking drawing process. Huddleston’s drawings and paintings are influenced in part by the work of filmmakers such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Chantal Akerman, both of whom frequently worked with recurring ensembles of actors. For Huddleston, reusing ‘actors’ or ‘characters’ from previous works is much like directing a personal theater company. She has likewise cited playwright Tennessee Williams’ emphasis on personal complexity as an informant of her work.
Her compositions balance personal expression with a precise formal approach, underscoring her commitment to capturing the emotion and psychology of her subjects. Her characters can be found in groups playing instruments, such as in Recital (2024), or alone in a Versailles-esque garden, seen in Company (2024), or breaking the fourth wall and gazing directly at the viewer, like in Gentleman Caller (2024). Regardless of their location or action, Huddleston’s figures often appear suspended, as though captured mid-performance. The meticulous construction and poise of each work conveys the tension of stage or sound-stage, upon which the curious half-world of actors and acting is created and played out.
Donna Huddleston (b. 1970, Belfast, Northern Ireland) lives and works in London. She received a BA from The National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney, Australia in 1997. She is a recipient of the 2020 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award. Recent solo exhibitions include Company, White Cube, London (2024); In Person, Simon Lee Gallery, London (2022); The Exhausted Student, Drawing Room, London (2020); Transitional Drawing, Charles Asprey, London (2019); and Witch Dance, Sadler’s Wells, London (2013). Recent group exhibitions include Kira Freije & Donna Huddleston: Six Portraits, The Approach, London (2023); Thin Skin, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2023); Threshold, Simon Lee Gallery, London (2023); Words, Simon Lee Gallery, London (2020); Out of This World, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (2019); and Interstellar, Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Berlin (2015). Her works are held in public collections including the British Arts Council, London, and UBS Art Collection, New York.
